Geekfoolery

I noticed a new feature on my Google Personalized Start Page today. There’s a little plus sign by each headline that when click, gives a quick one-paragraph preview of the article. I didn’t ask for it, it just showed up this evening. Google is like that. Here we are, minding our business, just thinking of […]

I once tried to do make a rubber stamp of my own likeness, and after an hour and a half cutting up a school eraser with a razor blade, I was actually kind of surprised that the finished product was actually identifiable as me

I showed off my handiwork to friends, and people asked me to […]

Flying. Sitting in the cockpit, stick-and-rudder, bandits, 12 o’clock high. Top Gun. Cool nicknames. Roger that. I have to believe the desire to be not only a pilot, but a fighter pilot, is just about universal. Reality interferes with the vast majority of us pursuing that dream as a way of life for one reason […]

The weekend project appears to be making a comeback. Our Dads and Granddads, to hear them tell it, lived in the age where when you needed something, you didn’t buy it, you just made it yourself-bookshelves, extra bedrooms, summer homes, and other minor projects were drawn out on legal pads with pencils, and Dads would […]

As a very young child watching the Road Runner cartoons, I was very interested in this company ACME. At such a tender young age, it seemed that the wonderful devices that arrived at the Coyote’s cave from ACME were real consumer goods, positioned in the cartoon as product placement. I was sold-I wanted to know […]

Machines taking over the world-the Terminator, the Matrix, Cylons. The idea that humanity may at some point be out-smarted and either enslaved or annihilated by our own machines is not just a handy plot device for some really great movies (and a few bad ones), it’s actually serious question debated by scholars. It’s called The […]